The Old Bridge baseball team – No. 1 in the preseason Bellamy & Son Paving Top Ten – warms up before a preseason scrimmage in Florida on March 23, 2024. (Photo: @OBVBaseball on Twitter)
The new season in high school baseball finds Old Bridge right where it left off in the old season: at No. 1 in the Bellamy & Son Paving Baseball Top Ten.
The Knights are coming off a 21-9 season in which they won the Central Jersey Group 4 championship by beating division foe North Brunswick in the title game, and went all the way to the state Group 4 final, falling 4-0 to Ridgewood. Old Bridge returns all but 13 of its over 200 innings pitched last season, led by seniors Frank Papeo and Justin “J.T.” Meyer.
Bridgewater-Raritan begins the year four places higher – at No. 2 – coming off a 23-7 campaign that saw them reach the North 2, Group 4 title game, losing at home to Bayonne. The Panthers – the highest-ranked Somerset County team – bring back pitchers Cory Rible and Matthew Fattore, both seniors, while Fattore, Devin Goldberg and Frankie Verano are among the top hitters back.
North Brunswick starts the season in third, the GMC Tournament runner-up from a year ago. And while ace Zack Konstantinovsky graduated and is now at Rutgers, seniors Alejandro Jabar and Kyle Anderson are solid arms back; both had ERAs a shade over two last season. And the lineup will build around heavy hitting Yomar (prounounced “JOE-mar”) Carreras, who batted .411 last season with 18 RBIs and two homers.
St. Joseph of Metuchen begins the season in third. Sure, they beat the Raiders in last year’s GMC Tournament title game, finishing 21-10, but they also lose a much larger portion of their lineup, a group that was together for the better part of three years since high school baseball resumed in New Jersey after COVID-19 cancelled the 2020 season. Juniors Joseph Barca and Matthew Friedman will be the early anchors in the rotation, but only senior Joseph Zammitti returns from the nine in the starting lineup for the Falcons in their Non-Public South A finals to Red Bank Catholic.
In fifth is Rutgers Prep, the defending Somerset County Tournament Champion. At 14-15 last season, they also made the Non-Public North B title game, losing to St. Mary-Rutherford. But among several graduates and transfers, they lose a pair of two-year starters who would have only been juniors: outstanding pitcher and Maryland commit Zach Fronio, who went home to North Hunterdon, and big hitter Andrew Parisi, who transferred closer to home to Ranney. But Max Treonze is back, and the Argonauts will look to some other arms that sat on the shelf last year recovering from injuries.
Checking in at No. 6 is Ridge, which was 25-4 last season, Somerset County Tournament runner-up. Their postseason came to a premature end due to a pitch count violation in the states. The Red Devils lose their three top pitchers to graduation in Connor Byrne, Brendan Callanan and Luke Somelofske, and while junior Aiden Stieglitz is back off a stellar sophomore campaign, head coach Tom Blackwell will have to find a lineup that can get the timely hits last year’s squad got more often than not.
In seventh is Spotswood, which went 21-8 a year ago. The Chargers were GMC Blue Division champs and reached the Central Jersey Group 2 finals, falling to Rumson-Fair Haven. Excellent pitcher Casey Cumiskey is off to Seton Hall, but his younger brother Carter – who will join him in South Orange in two years – will be back, after pitching to a 1.91 ERA in 44 innings last year, striking out 72, almost two per inning. Junior Breckyn DeAngelis – also one of the team’s better hitters – will see additional time on the mound, too, this year.
At No. 8 is Woodbridge, coming off a 20-6 season, their second straight 20-win campaign. (North Brunswick and St. Joe’s are the only other GMC schools to do that the last two seasons.) The Barrons didn’t lose a single pitcher to graduation, and the only senior starter gone is first baseman Ty Kobylakiewicz. Otherwise, the vast majority of a lineup that hit over .320 returns.
In ninth is Sayreville, which finished 15-10 last year, and won the GMC White Division, a half game ahead of the Barrons. Sayreville has a new head coach in Tim Ballard, who comes over from JFK to replace Mike Novak, who spent 20 years coaching the Bombers, including Ballard himself, who pitched for Sayreville, then went to Monmouth University. The Bombers should be good on the mound, but will be looking to fill some key spots in the lineup.
And Bernards comes in tenth, following a 15-10 season. They were the Skyland Conference Valley Division Co-Champions with Pingry last season. There’s no major turnover in the lineup, and two excellent pitchers return, including Evan Hoeckele, a senior who threw 41 innings last year to the tune of a 0.85 ERA, while fellow senior Charlie Gonella had a 1.54 ERA with the same workload.
Below is the complete Bellamy & Son Paving High School Baseball Preseason Top Ten:
